Tamazight Alkhamsa Lghareeb Chaouia tattoos - Algeria Name: Alkhamsa Lghareeb[1] Age at time of interview: 86 Background: Alkhamsa did not know her age, but a younger woman living in the home responded that she was 86 and found her identification card. She was born in L’green, a village outside of Chemora, and has lived here her whole life with the exception of one year in Algiers. The village is also called Oulad Fathl, after the clan. She said the village was much better before, even though her husband was poor, and they had to work very hard harvesting wheat. Now all of her family is in Dzair (Algiers). Tattoos: Alkhamsa received her tattoos at the age of ten and was not married. She met a woman at a wedding who had tattoos, and from that moment on she wanted some herself. She has a set of full facial tattoos, some of which are no longer clear. For Alkhamsa, burnous is found on her forehead, hijla on the right cheek, possibly shams on the left cheek, and cinsla and thabanat on the chin. She is the second woman[2] to have her temples tattooed. It is unclear what the symbols are but to me they look like rikab. She also has a sleeve of arm tattoos from the hand to the elbow which include symbols representing burnous, loghzala, cinsla, sa’a (clock), rikab, khalala, and thabana (pictured above). Her arm also has several zigzag patterns. Alkhamsa did not stop at face, arm, and hand, as she also has a palm tree tattoo on the right side of her right calf. She said her tattoos were done by an Arab man. Because of his speech, she believes he was from the Sahara region. He was clearly a nomad, and he was paid for the tattoos with cash. The man had his arms tattooed, and used the traditional tattooing tools including nishtar (small knife or blade), homoom (ashes), and hashish (weeds). She remembers the tattoos were done in autumn. While she has many tattoos, she says she was unaware that they were haram when she got them. Still, she says she doesn’t have regrets, and if it wasn’t considered haram, she would have gotten even more. She asks God to forgive her, but she genuinely likes the tattoos and the way they looked against her white skin when she was younger. While she and her sister are the only ones in her family tattooed, they are both tattooed extensively. Chaouia Identity: Alkhamsa holds her tattoos to be integral to her Chaouia identity. Other ways she feels Chaouia are through her traditional clothing (shash, mihlfa, and shliga), hizam (belt), and silver. She used to wear a very heavy khulkhal (a thick silver band) around her leg, but removed it. [1] This interview was a group interview containing Alkhamsa Lghareeb, Roqaya Lghareeb, and Yamina Hijazi [2] See Profile #7: Gaima Vieb https://chaouiatattoos.wordpress/2013/09/30/profile-16-alkhamsa-lghareeb/
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 18:07:25 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015